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Josh rubs my shoulder.
“So that’s what happened,” I rasp. “Last Thanksgiving, Mom said I had to come home, and go back to Sheppard Pratt. Do more ECT, and get back on my meds. And I thought if I told you…” I shake my head, wishing I remembered any of this. “From the letter, it looks like I thought that if I told you that, you’d take it hard. So I just ghosted, with a plan to get in touch in a few weeks. I did a few sessions okay. And every time, I wrote your name on my arm. ‘Miller.’ I knew forgetting was a possible side effect. But since it didn’t happen before, I guess I wasn’t worried.
“I don’t know. But I woke up one time with no memory of ever going to Fairplay. And I had your name on my arm.” I feel him inhale. I’m too chicken shit to look up at him. “Took me months to figure out I had a stepbro surnamed Miller. Got to Bama, started stalking you like crazy. I would feel this clawing, anxious thing when I would watch you.” I have to stop and swallow just remembering that feeling. “I think I missed you,” I rasp, “but I just didn’t know.”
I lift my head, and find tears running down his cheeks. He wipes at them, and I want to get up and run—just so I don’t have to be this person anymore.
“I don’t know how it was before,” I rasp, “but I’m fucked up. As you can see. I might not be who you were thinking. Or what you would want in college.” I swallow. “I can tell from your stuff that you’ve been having fun. And I can’t do that with the football…you know.”
A few tears fall, and I wipe at them. My throat is so tight. “I’m not flowers and sunshine and that shit. It seems like I didn’t tell you this story before. Anyway.” I wrap my arms around myself, feeling kind of dizzy. “I guess I just…thought I could go right back to you. After the ECT. I thought I could do it again. But it wiped me out from a few weeks before I left for Fairplay. I might get the memories back, or might not. I remember a few little things, but that’s it.”
Tears are dripping out of my eyes non-stop. I wipe them, breathing deep so I won’t break down. “I feel sorry that I put you through not knowing. That I figured it would all work out. And never mailed that letter.” I rub my eyes again and look at Miller through the blur of my tears. “I’m kind of sorry that you got involved with me.” My voice cracks. “Because on Snapchat, you seemed sad and all.” I start to lose my shit there—with Josh looking at me with his wet, hurt eyes. “I didn’t mean to mess you up, too.”
Josh
He keeps his emotions mostly under control as he tells me a story so horrific that it almost seems made up—I fucking want it to be fake—and then he starts to lose it when he says he’s sorry he hurt me. It’s quiet at first. He puts his face in his hands, and I scoot closer, desperate to hold him again.
When I touch his arm, he tenses and looks up and he says, “Sorry,” and I notice that his eyes are odd. They look dazed…like, unfocused.
I realize he’s breathing pretty fast. It reminds me of the thing he used to do after he first woke from a nightmare, where he’d kind of zone out.
“Hey, Ez.” I touch his shoulder lightly. “Let’s go to my room, okay? That hit pretty hard for me, and I just wanna hold you again. If it’s okay.”
He nods once, and I can tell for sure that he’s not tracking. Fuck. I take his hand—his clammy, shaking hand—and lead him to my bed, and he just stands there, so I lie down and beckon him onto the mattress with me. He moves almost stiffly onto his back, but I can’t let that fly.
I whisper, “We like to lie on our sides, facing one another. Is that okay? Or do you want me behind you, big spoon?”
“Either way,” he manages. His lips are trembling. His eyes look so dazed. He’s shivering a little—shaking, I guess—and in that second, I can feel the full weight of how broken he is, and it’s so gut-wrenching I want to sob.
Tears are dripping down his cheeks, and he’s so pale and haunted, but his eyes follow me as I get onto my knees, and on his face there is a look of concern.
“You don’t have to,” he starts.
I lie down beside him, and I hug the shit out of my Ezra. The sick feeling I’ve had—it gets driven away by this feeling where my stomach coils and my chest goes all warm and achy, and all I want to do is hold him for a lifetime. Till he’s okay again. Till he feels good.
